*Is there a bigger example on the web of not knowing your audience than ESPN.com automatically playing video content - i.e., with sound - when you open the page?

*I'm still unclear on why exactly the Twins-Tigers game has to be tomorrow instead of today....I'll have a more detailed post - whether you like it or not - on my Roto team, but I enter that game tied for first place, and if I lose the pennant by one home run or one RBI (both a real possibility) despite having the possible AL MVP, Cy Young and Rookie of the Year on my team, I swear I'm gonna sue Grady Sizemore.

It's been sad watching the direction of Letterman and his show the last few years. I've had progressively less time to watch anyway since I started working for a living, but I'd been a fan on and off for decades. If there's one lesson here, it's that if you wanted to keep an affair secret, you don't take the woman you're sleeping with, put her on air on your national TV show and flirt with her shamelessly. Well, that and a guy who's a producer at 48 Hours shouldn't be dumb enough to think he could get away with blackmailing a public figure. Another glorious chapter in the history of CBS News.

*The Washington Post's paid left-wing activist Greg Sargent is proud that the Left is playing the race card on health care - seriously, read this post. Sargent's thesis is that the ad in question is racial code and that that's a good thing. Regardless of what you think of the ad itself, that speaks volumes about Sargent's mindset. What remains less clear is why the Post employs a full-time left-wing activist in the first place.

Monday Night Football is being played at the Metrodome tonight. That's why the game is pushed until Tuesday.

Posted by: MojoMark at
October 5, 2009 2:50 PM

I don't think there was any way the US was getting the 2016 Olympics whether the Obamas had traveled to Copenhagen or not; the Committee wasn't in love with Chicago's bid, the US has hosted four times in the last 30 years, we've made travel to the US a nuisance, plus there is still worldwide animosity over the Iraq war, etc. I also think the talk about "expending scarce political capital" over the Olympics is overwrought.

That said, now that I've seen exactly what the first couple said to the IOC, I don't understand how they could possibly have thought their speech was going to sway anyone. It does drift into narcissism.

Posted by: Chris at
October 5, 2009 6:01 PM

I know logic is not one of your strengths, but c'mon. Sargent's piece pointing out that attempts to mobalize minority constituents of wavering Dems by pointing out how both the civil rights struggle and health care reform are in their interests is "playing the race card"?

I suppose in your view, the whole civil rights struggle was "playing the race card."

Posted by: Magrooder at
October 5, 2009 11:03 PM

There was a lovely op-ed in the NYT about the alleged worlds view of us because of Iraq. We were the most hated country in the world in the............... 1920s. A majority of French and, I believe, English citizens had a negative view of America in.............1945. Thats right, right after we sacrificed 100s of thousands lives to free them and a fortune.

These people that the left is so eager to please, the International Community, the people who they think we need approval from are our competitors, are the countries we have defeated in war, in trade, in economics, countries that were powerful once and were overtaken by us, countries that want to be the top dog now but are blocked by us, countries that hate us because we are richer than them, more powerful than them, more influential than them. They are weak and they hate to be reminded of that...period.

Posted by: dch at
October 5, 2009 11:05 PM

If you think equal rights under the law is the same thing as "getting me some free stuff", then Sargent, I guess, doesn't look like the cynical race-baiter at all.

Read the comments at his blog, too. He appears to have rounded up a real brain trust of lefties over there. I often wonder what a cynical, manipulative leftist like Sargent must think when he reads his comments section. Whether he's pleased that the dolts are buying it or ashamed of the lowest common denominator he plays to.

Posted by: spongeworthy at
October 6, 2009 3:48 AM

Crank

The American Thinker piece you link to is ridiculous. It starts from the conclusion that the Obamas did a bad job and then goes backwards to allegedly show why it failed, but without putting in any context of the IOC voting process, the IOC's relationship with the USOC, the underlying desire to get the Olympics to a part of the world it's never been to.

The fact is we have no idea how the speeches by the President and the First Lady impacted voting. You used to be a bigger fan of using fact-based arguments. What happened?

Posted by: Jimmy at
October 6, 2009 5:27 PM

The point of the Thinker piece wasn't to rule out the possibility that the US lost for reasons totally unrelated to the Obamas' sales pitch - which is highly likely - but simply to evaluate the pitch on its own terms and explain why it was a bad pitch and unlikely to help. I don't hear you disagreeing with any of that. Your defense seems to be "Obama was going to lose anyway so it doesn't matter if he was incompetent."

I don't actually need a defense since all I did was point out how flawed the piece was you linked to. I did not say the speeches were good or bad or state whether I thought the Obamas should have gone to Copenhagen.

Without knowing more about the IOC and the other issues I mentioned previously, there is no way whatsoever to know whether their speeches were remotely effective. The Brazilian president certainly appealed to emotion in his speech, so the idea that one can categorically claim that such approaches are ineffective is nonsense.

Posted by: Jimmy at
October 6, 2009 6:00 PM

3. I am fine with us getting 1 summer and 1 winter every 16-20 years

Posted by: dch at
October 6, 2009 8:06 PM

3. I am fine with us getting 1 summer and 1 winter every 16-20 years

Posted by: dch at
October 6, 2009 8:06 PM

why am I having problems posting?

We have had 8 Olympics, the next nearest country has had 3. I am fine with us getting 1 winter olympics and summer olympics every 16-20 years.

I actually would rather we just set up a permanent rotation of two or three venues for each set of Games. For example, always have the Summer games in either Athens or Sydney, and always have the Winter games in either Lake Placid or Innsbruck. We already know that these nations have mastered the logistics of hosting, and then facilities could be re-used, etc.